


Unheld Conversations: A Collection of Dreams

by linman



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to "Direct the Other Way" and "Sundry Superlatives." In which maps and mirrors figure prominently in Snape's and Harry's mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unheld Conversations: A Collection of Dreams

1.  _Passing Knights_

 

Harry Potter couldn’t sleep.  He pounded his lumpy pillow and huddled in a lump in the rickety bed.  The house was quiet, except for Ron’s distant snores and the faint patter of rats in the kitchen.  Outside the dusty window, a suggestion of starlight teased his uncorrected vision.

            Usually he couldn’t see stars, but the sky, like everything else of late, had taken on a distressing clarity: now, as never before, the faint twinkle played tricks on him, oscillating lightly, now bright, now faint.

            …Wait.  That wasn’t starlight.  Harry sat up.  The light was somewhere nearer than the sky…possibly even in the room with him.  He found his glasses and put them on.

            The light was shining through the crack of his school trunk lid where it sat under the window—light Harry associated with the undulating water-shadows of a Pensieve.  Harry was pretty sure he didn’t suddenly own a Pensieve, so he got his wand from under his pillow and got out of bed to approach the trunk, slowly and carefully.

            With as little noise as possible he used magic to open the trunk from a few feet away.  Nothing leaped out at him.  He bent tentatively over the open trunk and lit his wand to survey its shambolic contents.

            It took a moment to locate the source of the light, as it was coming from various parts of the trunk at once; but at last he found, digging through his possessions, that at least some of it was coming from a shard of glass at the bottom.

            Why was there a shard of glass in the bottom of his trunk?  Harry cudgeled his brains for a slow minute till he realized: this was a bit of the mirror Sirius had given him—the mirror whose twin Sirius had possessed.

            Someone was trying to contact him with Sirius’s mirror.

            “_Reparo_!” Harry hissed at the shard.  With a tinkling crunch, the shards flew up from among Harry’s books and robes and Potions accoutrements and joined the shard to form the mirror, whole, in Harry’s hand.  Harry glanced over his shoulder; the sound had not waked Ron or Hermione, for the silence of the house continued as before.  Heart beating high, Harry bent to look in the bright mirror.  Of course it couldn’t be…of course…but….

            It wasn’t Sirius Black.

            “_You!_” Harry pushed out in an angry hiss.  “What are you doing with Sirius’s mirror?”

            Evidently Severus Snape actually had something to say to him, for he answered the question without first making any jibes about Harry being asleep at the switch, or having broken his mirror.  “It was in the remainder of those things Mundungus Fletcher made away with from…er…from your house.”  There was a thin smirk on his face; Harry glared at him.  “There are some interesting things here—” he glanced off to his side— “but it appears you didn’t take the trouble to look for anything besides the Horcrux.”

            “Is any of it relevant to my—work?” Harry laid a sarcastic and unsubtle emphasis on the last word.

            “Not really, no,” Snape said.

            “Then I don’t give a flying—”

            “You might, however,” Snape interrupted smoothly, “take an interest in some information I have for you.”

            “And then again,” Harry said, “I might not.”  Belatedly he lowered his voice mid-sentence, to avoid waking the others.

            “Suit yourself,” Snape said, and retreated from the mirror.

            It was well-played; Harry’s curiosity was piqued despite himself.  “All right, all right,” he said ungraciously.  “What?”

            It really _must_ be serious, Harry reflected, because Snape did not bother with the taunts about Harry’s attitude that ought to have been as de rigueur as giving Harry bottom marks on an essay.

            “Make of it what you will—” he said, “—but I must tell you that it would be most inadvisable for the Order of the Phoenix to have their next meeting as scheduled in the usual location.”

            “Is that so?” Harry said dryly.

            “It is,” Snape said.

            “So what do you suggest, then?” Harry said, working up a solicitous sarcasm.  “Shall I tell them to meet someplace else, and give you the location in advance?”

            “That won’t be necessary.”  The thin, hateful smile reappeared.  “All you need do is bar Nymphadora Tonks from attending, and either relocate or else Imperturb the kitchen window.”

            “Tonks?” Harry said, startled quite out of countenance.

            “Last week,” Snape said, in a bored voice, “Miss Tonks was unfortunate enough to get into a tussle with one of your dear godfather’s relatives, and left behind a very distinctive pink hair.  I believe a pair of Extendable Ears was purchased from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes under her unwitting auspices, as well.  I am unaware whether her powers transfer as well as her morphology, so it might be best to keep her under lock and key until the danger has passed.  I know,” Snape said, very seriously, “you should set Remus Lupin to do it.  I know he does love to stand guard over things.”

            Harry raised an eyebrow.  “Aren’t you assuming a bit much?”

            “Oh, I must have been mistaken.  His interest in her was quite innocent, then?”

            “I meant about how much influence I have over the Order,” Harry said, gritting his teeth.

            “It’s a bit more than I have, isn’t it?” Snape said, casually.  “And besides, you have plenty of practice convincing reluctant people of incipient conspiracies.  Perhaps you should take out an ad in the Quibbler.”

            Harry snorted to avoid a laugh.

            “Is that it, then?”

            “I do believe it is,” Snape said.

            “Suppose, then,” Harry said grimly, “I go back to bed and forget all about this conversation?  I’d like to see myself endangering the entire Order by passing them information from you.”

            Snape sighed.  “Potter,” he said bitingly, “against my better judgment I decided not to mislead you in the expectation that you’d do the opposite to what I advised.”

            Harry bristled.  “If it were a matter of me being contrary—”

            “Why don’t you wait and see what happens?  Or can’t you afford it?  I understand the numbers of the Order have diminished considerably since I left.”

            “That was—” Harry stopped.  “No, never mind.  It was quite worthy of you.”

            “Competence, Potter,” Snape snarled, “is a virtue.”

            “Oh?  Well, tell me: does Legilimency work across two-way mirrors?”

            “Why, are you thinking of trying it?”

            Harry was startled to realize he _had_ just been thinking of it.  He had never thought before to go on the offense, so to speak, when it came to Legilimency; he had always considered himself inescapably passive in that arena.

            His surprise must have shown on his face, because Snape rolled his eyes.  “I don’t have time for this nonsense.  If you have the skill to break into my mind—” his smirk suggested he doubted it— “you’ll have to try it at another opportunity.  One last bit of advice, Potter:  if this mirror ever calls you again, you’d do well to answer it with your cloak on till you see who’s in it, in case this mirror falls into unfriendly hands.”

            Harry gave a great snort.

            “_More_ unfriendly hands, that is,” Snape amended, with a familiar slow smile.

            “Competence,” Harry answered gravely, “is a virtue.”

            Snape gave a snort as loud as Harry’s, and disappeared.  The mirror dimmed, and went dark.

            For a moment Harry was tempted to break the mirror a second time.  He settled for dropping it gently but unceremoniously into his trunk and uttering a few pungent obscenities under his breath.  He stood and began to pace the little bedroom, turning over and over what Snape had told him.

            He couldn’t see how telling the Order to guard Tonks could harm them, unless it was meant as a distraction from someone _else_ who’d been Polyjuiced.  Or perhaps it was meant merely as a distraction for him.  _Competence is a virtue_, Snape had said.  Yeah, that was a good message to send to the Order, Harry thought sourly.  He could imagine how they would receive the intimation that they didn’t know their jobs. 

            He thought it over, standing still in the middle of the room, for a long minute.  Then he sighed deeply and raised his wand.

            “_Expecto Patronum_!”

            From his wandtip burst the glowing silver stag, who turned on silent feet to face him in the darkness.

            “Tell them to cast their Patronuses at the beginning of every meeting from now on,” Harry told the stag.  “Tell them Tonks is the object of a Polyjuice plot.  Tell them to Imperturb the kitchen window.”

            The stag shimmered, and disappeared.

            Harry glared over at his trunk.  “I’d better not have made a mistake,” he said.

            He went back to bed, and dropped into a fitful sleep.  Outside the window, the night sky shone with clear starlight.

 

 

2.  _Castling_

 

Harry crept along the darkened corridor, wishing desperately for his cloak: he was fairly sure that he had been neither followed nor detected, but still he felt dreadfully exposed.  But his work was nearly finished, and mixed in with his perpetual apprehension was the heady beginnings of triumph.  He tried very hard to dampen the feeling: it would do him no good whatsoever.

            Nevertheless, it seemed to Harry that there was no longer any point skulking down this corridor.  He could be just as quiet walking upright and ready, as if it were daylight and he were here to meet friends.  (_Please let Ron and Hermione be safe_.)

            A sound echoed behind him in the darkness, instantly dislimning Harry’s sense of security.  He’d been a fool not to have the map out on his way back…. He quickened his step, glancing over his shoulder—

            But it was in front of him that the figure appeared.  In the instant, Harry’s wand hand whipped up to eye level, an action that was mirrored by the man he’d nearly cannoned into.  For a split second Harry didn’t recognize him.  Then he did.

            Neither of them lowered their wands.

            Harry had time for three disconnected thoughts before the next sound betrayed the approach of the shadower.  The first was that he was now quite as tall as Severus Snape.  The second was that if Snape was here, it meant he’d been outclassed in this little chess game, possibly fatally.

            The third was that this had to be the oddest nighttime Hogwarts excursion he’d ever been on.  Because just before the next sound came behind Harry, Snape jerked his head ever so slightly to his left and disappeared into an alcove that led to what Harry knew to be a little-used passage to the Charms corridor.

            Harry’s shadow betrayed his approach again.  With a mental shrug, Harry silently followed after Snape.

            It took till daybreak to outwait the Death Eater who had tailed Harry into the castle; watching the Marauder’s Map till he had exited the front doors, Harry now had plenty of time to think.

            Hogwarts was like a ghost ship:  dark, deserted, guarded only by a skeleton crew of teachers, Aurors, and Order members, it was easy to get inside if you knew how.  It was only a matter of time before Voldemort took over here.  Harry had become reconciled to this notion before now:  Ron, the chess player, had suggested to him that Hogwarts was the perfect place to maneuver Voldemort into a mistake during the endgame.  Still, Harry hated the dreary dimness of the place; its lifelessness, its unnatural stillness.  He almost wanted to roust Peeves out of hiding and set him to livening the place up.

            But the empty classroom (they were all empty now) remained perfectly silent.  Snape was so still that there had been moments Harry forgot he was in the room: he had taken up a post in a shadow by one of the windows and not moved, his arms folded tightly as if he were hugging himself, his black eyes mere pinpricks of cold light in the grey predawn dimness.

            So far not a single word had passed between them.

            But when the Death Eater set to tail Harry disappeared off the map into the Forbidden Forest, Harry looked up.  “He’s gone into the forest,” he said quietly.

            Snape did not reply.  He didn’t even move.

            Harry turned to look directly at the hunched figure.  Without the grand self-carriage and magisterial billow of robes that his position had given him, one saw instead the wiry frame, the careful stance, the brooding shadows under his eyes.  It occurred to Harry that like Voldemort, like himself, Snape had felt most at home here: Hogwarts could never be owned, but it certainly could be lost, and they had all lost it.

            “We’d both best be gone,” Harry said, his voice curt to offset the uncomfortable sensation in his innards.  He sounded, to his own surprise, something like an adult.

            “My post is here,” Snape said quietly, his eyes still fixed on some some spot outside the window.

            Harry gave a small snort.  “Voldemort sure knows how to torture his followers,” he said, before he could stop himself.

            That got Snape’s attention.  Harry, as how often before, found the black eyes unpleasantly boring into his, but he held Snape’s gaze calmly.  “What’d you do to get this assignment?” he asked.

            Snape raised one languid eyebrow.  It seemed to Harry that he was actually looking rather ill.  “I’m here to prepare the ground.”

            “Prepare the ground…how?”  But as soon as he said it, Harry knew.  “You’re picking off the defenders.  One at a time.”

            “So far I haven’t actually had to kill any of them.  I’ve been getting rid of them by various drugs and a few powerful memory charms, and setting them all to suspect one another.”

            Harry blew out his cheeks.  “So Ron’s right.  The endgame is going to happen here.”

            “If I wanted to,” Snape said idly, “I could spend endless incredulous hours contemplating the notion of Weasley as a chess master.”

            “He got me to the Stone our first year,” Harry said, with mingled pride and worry about Ron’s present whereabouts.  “And Hermione solved your logic puzzle.”

            “Of course she did,” Snape said.  “I didn’t think _you’d_ done.”

            Harry gave him a wry smirk.

            “You could,” Snape said suddenly, “stay here.  You’ve moved on to the main stage of action now, have you not?”

            “I’ve got something else to do.”  Harry wasn’t sure what lay behind this odd offer of Snape’s, but it didn’t matter anyway.

            “Something else.  I thought you’d found them all.”

            “Well, one can never be sure,” Harry said.  “But it’s not to do with that.  I’ve got to find my friends and make sure they’re safe.”

            “You’d do better to let them go,” Snape said quietly.

            Harry drew a long breath, and managed to keep his calm.  “Out of the question.”

            “I’m sure Weasley, the chess master, would tell you the same.”

            It was the further mention of chess that alarmed and piqued Harry.  Whatever Snape was up to, whatever had happened to Ron, it was beyond Harry’s ability to grasp with his mind from where he stood.  He was getting rather tired of this helpless feeling.

            “I’ve got to go,” Harry said.  “I owe my friends help.  I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

            He had said it with hardly even a trace of contempt, but Snape bristled.  “Don’t you dare,” he snarled, “presume to pass judgment on me like—”

            “Yeah,” Harry said, bristling in his turn, “because you didn’t do it to _me_ at all.  I was eleven years old, and you made me a—what did you call it?—personal enemy, before I knew anything about you, or about the past.”  Harry was breathing fast now.  “So excuse me, but I think I will presume.  Besides—” and here he drew his wand and took his first step backward to the door— “_I_ haven’t killed anyone.”  He began to turn away.

            “Yet,” Snape said.

            Harry stopped, and looked back at him for a moment.  “Yet,” he agreed.  “But whoever I kill, they won’t be from among the innocent.  Or the great.”  And this time he turned his back on Snape altogether and strode to the door.

            He heard nothing, but knew Snape was drawing his wand.  He stopped as if he’d walked into a wall and whipped his wandtip to point over his shoulder, in challenge.

            Nothing happened.

            Presently Harry was able to draw a calmer breath; he sighed, and moved again to leave.

            “Potter,” Snape said, quietly.

            Something in the other man’s tone made Harry stop dead once more.  He half-turned to look at Snape.  “Yes?” he answered, in the same tone.

            Snape had indeed drawn his wand, but his stance was not aggressive in the least, and the wand was not pointed his direction.  “It may,” Snape said in the same quiet tone, “be me you’ll have to kill.”

            There was a silence, as the rose-orange dawnlight warmed the room.

            “I’ve only got one person on my list,” Harry said, at last.  “And it’s not you.”

            “Nevertheless,” Snape said.

            “So, what?” Harry said.  “You’re going to keep your cover to the grave?  Or is that not part of your work?”

            Snape said nothing, merely regarded him with glittering eyes.

            “What _is_ this work of yours, anyway?” Harry said finally, losing patience.  “Or do I not rate an explanation?  I’ve never heard any of Voldemort’s other supporters describe their—”

            “My work,” Snape said quietly, “is to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled.”

            Harry was silent for a split second; then a laugh hooted out of him.  “The only way you could _stop_ the prophecy from being fulfilled, Professor,” he said, “is to convince Tom Riddle that he really doesn’t want to kill me after all.”

            “Fulfilled,” Snape repeated, and added, “in your favor.”

            Thundering silence followed these words.

            “You don’t even know what the whole thing says,” Harry said, half-breathless.  Red-gold light from the rising sun picked its way into the room and lit the side of his face, burnished the dark filaments of his hair.  But Snape remained in shadow—all of him except his wand hand, which was poised calm and steady at his waist.

            “I don’t need to,” Snape said.

            “You’ve been working _blind_?”

            “Seems to have worked out so far.”

            Harry gave Snape a very shrewd look.  “Are you sure about that?”

            Snape sketched a delicate shrug.

            Harry stared at him.  Was this a Slytherin thing?  To wrap up something very, very simple in layers upon layers of charade and subtlety?  He realized to his deep consternation that it hadn’t, even yet, occurred to him to disbelieve Snape.  Maybe it was the ghostly silence of his only home getting to him, but he thought he could spy a poetic symmetry in Snape’s avowed mission.  James and Lily Potter were dead.  Harry Potter was alive.  These simple facts informed everything Snape was doing: not a transfiguration, but a transposition from one language to the next—

            Harry blinked and shook his head, to clear it.

            Snape said briskly, “As I was saying, Potter, it may become necessary for you to kill me in what you so picturesquely term the endgame.  If that is the case, you had better do it without fussing, and let us have none of your foolish Gryffindor heroics—”

            Harry shook his head quickly.  “I’m not killing you.”

            Snape’s voice hardened.  “You may not have a choice.”

            “You always have a choice,” Harry said.  “And I say no.”

            “Don’t—be—stupid,” Snape enunciated.  “You’re the one who needs a free hand.”

            “My _hand_,” Harry said, getting angry again, “is not free.  It is pointed at Tom Riddle.  I made that choice already.  What’s this bee in your bonnet, anyway?  What makes you think I’ll have to kill you?”

            “I haven’t got any clear-cut theories, just some suspicions.  As you said, I am working blind.  Nearly as blind as you.”

            Harry threw his head back, rolling his eyes.  “Slytherin games!  I can’t wait till this is all done.”

            “I’m quite prepared, you know,” Snape said.  “You have my informed consent, if that means anything to you.”

            “Slytherin games,” Harry repeated.  “Don’t tell me you aren’t interested in surviving.”

            Snape cocked his head in a very familiar smug gesture, partially obscured by the sun now pouring into the room between them.  “Naturally,” he said, in his silkiest voice (Harry gritted his teeth), “I shouldn’t mind surviving.  But,” he added, in a calm note Harry had never heard before today, “I shouldn’t mind dying either.”

            “Why?” Harry said, startled into the question.  “Is it because you’ve lost Hogwarts?”

            Instantly he sensed he’d gone too far.  Snape did not move, but his next words were very cold indeed.

            “I gave you permission to conduct your mission without regard for my safety, not to draw misguided and cack-handed conclusions about my psyche, or speculate upon what I might have to live for.  That is my business.”

            Harry’s lips compressed.  “Forgive me,” he said; “looks like I got too used to trying to get my own back for everybody knowing _my_ business.”

            “As it happens,” Snape said, a new, desperate sneer in his voice, “I’ve lost a great deal more than Hogwarts.  But I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

            “Oh that’s very clever,” Harry said, his fist clenching around his wand, “throwing my words back at me like—”

            “You can’t even grasp the concept of subtlety; no wonder you hate it so—”

            “Subtlety kills people,” Harry said roughly.

            “So does bald crassness.  Tell me again, why aren’t you the Ministry’s poster boy?”

            “Because they’re grandstanding idiots,” Harry said.  “They haven’t tumbled to it yet that it’s why they keep losing people they love.  You’re immune from _that_ pain at least—”

            “_Am I, Potter_?” Snape said in an awful voice.

            Part of Harry seemed to be detached in horror from this spiraling confrontation: he knew what he was trying to force Snape to say, and couldn’t stop the urge—

            “If you’re talking about Dumble—”

            Harry lifted his wand hand just in time to deflect the white-hot curse Snape sent at him.  Snape stepped forward into the dazzling morning light and let him have another.  Harry blocked that one, and a third, which shot to the window and exploded in a storm of tinkling glass.  In the short silence that followed, Harry glanced at the map and saw that the dot labeled “Minerva McGonagall” was on the move, three floors above.  “Now you’ve done it,” Harry grated out.  “I have to go now.”  He picked up the map and stowed his wand: if Snape wanted to curse him badly enough to hit him unarmed, good luck to it.  He moved to the door, which was now decorated with bright fireflies of reflection from the shattered glass on the floor.  “And I’m still not killing you.”

            “Damn it, Potter,” Snape said, no longer caring to keep his voice low, “can you never do as you’re told?”

            Suddenly, the horrifying sympathy and confusion and worry hit its breaking point inside him, and Harry burst into real, honest laughter.  Still grinning as if at a friend, he turned to Snape and said:

            “Rufus Scrimgeour keeps asking me that, too.”  He grinned wider at Snape’s blank expression.  “Don’t think he knows me as well as you do, though.”  He saluted Snape messily with the map and reached for the doorknob.

            Snape said, his voice as blank as his face:  “Why did you call me ‘Professor’ just now?”

            Harry regarded him thoughtfully over his shoulder.  “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if it’s Hogwarts that’s a ghost of itself, or us.”

            Despite the growing urgency of the hour, a silence fell in which neither of them moved.

            Harry smiled again.  “I could give you a blunter answer, if you prefer,” he said.

            “No,” Snape said, his black eyes glinting in what was not quite a smile, “that will do.”

            Harry made to fold the Marauder’s Map, but he looked down at it and suddenly saw what he was doing.  “You could probably use this,” he said, holding it out.

            Snape blinked at him unmoving.

            “Well, go on then,” Harry said, gesturing insistently with the parchment.  “I can’t dawdle.”

            Slowly Snape reached out and took the map from Harry’s hand.

            “You want to wipe it,” Harry explained quickly, “you tap it and say, ‘mischief managed.’  And if you want to open it again, say, ‘I solemnly swear I am up to no good.’”

            Looking at the map, Snape barked out a strangled grunt that Harry highly suspected was a laugh.  On his way out the door, he paused just long enough to say gravely, “Remember, you have to solemnly swear.”  And he shut the door softly without waiting for Snape to reply.

            Without the map, it took Harry a little longer to work his way out of the castle without being spotted by McGonagall or anyone else.  But once he’d made it out the front doors and down past the silent greenhouses to where the Whomping Willow guarded his escape route, Harry found himself walking as if he’d lost the weight of some odd burden he hadn’t known he’d carried.

            Harry smiled.  It was a lovely, clear morning.

            Now to get his friends back.

 

 

3.  _Gambit_

 

Harry faced Snape across the table.  “No,” he said.

            Snape rolled his eyes.  “Think of a better plan, then.”

            “I thought I’d just walk in there, kick his arse for him, and get my friends back.”

            Snape just stared at him, squinting.

            “I was joking,” Harry said.

            “No, you weren’t.”

            “I’m not afraid of him,” Harry said, folding his arms for emphasis.

            “Who said anything about fear? We’re discussing strategy.”

            “I know what you’re doing,” Harry said.  “And it’s not strategy.  Besides, if I’m going to die tonight, I want to do it with my own face on.”

            “Well, that’s likely enough, with your plan,” Snape sneered.

            “I’m not putting you in _my_ danger,” Harry insisted.

            “No, you’re just putting everyone _else_ in your danger.  Do you want to win this, or not?”

            Harry glowered at him for a moment.  He could see exactly where this was going to go, and he didn’t like it in the least.  “You’re going to get killed for sure.”

            “Your point being?”  Snape raised a sardonic eyebrow.

            His breath constricted, Harry looked down at the two goblets of unimprinted Polyjuice Potion.  He couldn’t, in point of fact, think of a better plan.  _That’s chess!_ Ron’s voice snapped in his mind’s ear.  _You have to make some sacrifices!_

            He shut his eyes and drew a long breath.  Then, with an impatient flourish, he pulled off his glasses and held them out across the table to Snape.

            “You’ll need those,” Snape said calmly, “till we exchange clothes.”  He stood up and began to unbutton his collar.

            Harry let his head fall back.  “Oh, come _on_.”

            “Do you take Voldemort for a fool?” Snape asked him mildly, undoing his robes.  It was the first time Harry had ever heard Snape use the name.

            Harry heaved a sigh.  “No,” he said, “I do not.”  He put his glasses back on and hiked up one foot to untie his shoe.

            Ten minutes later Harry found himself redoing the persnickety buttons of Snape’s collar around his own neck, wincing and deeply uncomfortable from head to foot.  “If I survive this,” he muttered, “I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

            “Ditto,” Snape said gloomily, plucking at the frayed edge of Harry’s sleeve.  “Don’t you ever wash your socks, Potter?”

            Harry did not answer, merely sighed and plucked one of his own hairs to drop in one of the goblets of potion.  It fizzed red sparks and turned a sickly gold.

            He looked up to find Snape doing the same with the other goblet, which emitted a tight-swirling silver mist and turned the sort of green one didn’t like to see in one’s handkerchief.

            Both making sickened looks, they traded goblets.  Harry swallowed his gorge and lifted his dose for a toast.  “To Salazar Slytherin,” he said.  “May his Heir pop his clogs.”

            “To Slytherin,” Snape murmured, and lifted his goblet to drain in one.  Harry did the same.

            He had forgotten how very unpleasant the immediate effects of taking Polyjuice Potion were.  He doubled over, groaning, and started a feverish trembling in every fiber; nausea roiled over him so that even his hair felt sick, and every inch of his skin prickled horribly, then rippled and changed.  The whole room seemed to tilt around him, and he fell to his knees, his vision spinning.

            Once the waves of prickling sickness began to abate, Harry stumbled to his feet, rubbing his left knee, which hurt a little more than his fall to the floor warranted.  Now, the clothes he was wearing felt perfectly comfortable.  He brushed his long hair out of his face and looked up.

            Across the table, Harry Potter was cleaning his glasses on his robes with a very sour look on his face.

            “I had forgotten,” Harry said, and cleared his throat roughly when he heard Snape’s voice coming out of his mouth, “that this is even less fun than expelling a bloody great snake out of one’s nose.”

            The Harry across the table grunted a laugh.  “You don’t keep your glasses clean, either,” he said.  “This will have to do.”  He put them on and looked across the table.  “A snake, you say?  How very predictable.”  He smiled thinly.

            “Thanks for that, by the way,” Snape’s voice said.

            “No problem.  And don’t hold your shoulders like that.  You’ll look ridiculous.”  The other Harry stowed his wand (his own wand, as they had agreed there was no sense in either of them being poorly armed, and their wands were similar enough in length and color not to betray them) and said briskly:  “Now.  We’ve got an hour to get this done.  It won’t take long to get up the hill to the castle.  You’ll take me as your prisoner.  Once we’re inside, we may as well go straight to the Great Hall, where he will be holding court.”

            “Which was my plan,” Harry said.

            “With a significant difference.”  Snape’s smirk looked dreadful on Harry’s face.  “And I hope to God you’ve been practicing your Occlumency.  It’ll ruin everything if you’re still viewing the thing as a matter of blocking rather than concealing that there’s anything to _be_ blocked.”

            “Don’t worry,” Harry said.  “Have you got the map?”

            “In your pocket.”

            “Good.  If I have the opportunity, I’m going to get Ron and Hermione freed first.”

            “No,” the other Harry said sharply.  “Your first priority is Voldemort.”

            “I’m not leaving them prisoner,” Harry said, clenching Snape’s teeth.

            “Yes—” (Harry had never hated his own voice so much) “—you are.”

            Harry took one slow breath and let it out.  “I have been very, very patient up to this point—”

            Snape turned to glare at him.  “Well, don’t stop now,” he snapped.

            “The whole point of this venture was to spring the trap—”

            The other Harry suddenly took hold of him by the neck of his robes and hauled him close.  “Now you listen to me,” he hissed.  “How would it be if Granger and Weasley are under the Imperius Curse, or otherwise compromised—”

            “Otherwise compromised—?”  Harry was suddenly angrier than he’d been in a very long time.  “Are you suggesting—”

            “I’m not suggesting it, I’m saying it.  There are any number of ways Voldemort can have rendered your friends a liability to you, and the only way you can save them is to kill him.  That’s the way it is.  And if you don’t like it, we can stop this game right now.  Is that what you want?”

            “No,” Harry snarled.

            “Then _get a grip_, Potter.”  Seeing that Harry was willing to calm himself, Snape relaxed his hold on his own robes.  Harry batted his own hand away with a conservative, vicious slap.

            “Don’t touch me,” he said.

            Snape smirked.  “That looks a bit more convincing.  Do try and move with a little dignity, Potter, as befits the Head of Slytherin House.”

            “And _you_ stop using words like ‘befits.’  It’s not Ernie Macmillan you’re impersonating, after all.”

            “Right,” Snape replied, with a smirk over his shoulder as he took the lead out the door.  “I’ll try to adopt a baboon’s vocabulary.”

            With an air of savage dignity, Harry poked his mirror image hard in the back of the head.  Not satisfied with this (Snape chuckled in Harry’s voice), he drew his wand and conjured a rock underfoot for “Harry Potter” to trip on.  He went down in a flump of worn school robes, and flipped over, glaring as he straightened his glasses awkwardly on his face.  Harry bent to help him up with ungentle hands.

            “I thought you ought to be a little dirtier,” he said, giving him Snape’s own sardonic smirk.  “Also—” he waited till Snape had almost regained his equilibrium and hit him round the face, hard— “slightly the worse for wear.”

            The other Harry wiped neatly at the blood on his lip and then jerked his robes straight.  “Right,” he said.  “Many thanks.”

            They continued up the hill toward the castle gates, Harry determinedly not thinking about what this was going to do to his psyche as he occasionally shoved and manhandled his own person ahead of him.  It grew unnervingly easy as they went to walk with Snape’s stalking stride, to cock his chin with his eyes on the horizon with that—he had thought inimitable—shadowed arrogance, to think of himself (and this is what he knew would protect him from Voldemort’s Legilimency) as enjoying a long-awaited triumph over all his enemies….

            “Walk a mile in the other’s shoes, they say,” he murmured.

            “_Your_ shoes,” Potter said, ahead of him, “are a masterpiece of filth.”

            “Shut up, Potter,” Harry said, with an indulgent contempt.

            They reached the castle gates without mishap; a Death Eater Harry recognized but didn’t know by name jumped to open them.  “You’ve got him, then?” he gloated.

            “He tried to sneak in by one of the secret passages,” Harry said with a smirk.  “Fortunately, my knowledge of the castle and grounds is superior.”

            “Go on up,” the Death Eater said, with a leer at Potter.  “The Dark Lord will be waiting.”

            Harry gave his alter ego a vicious shove in the back of the head, and they proceeded through the gates and up the drive.

            Despite his growing ease at being Snape, Harry couldn’t help sucking in his breath through his teeth at his first sight of Hogwarts.  As he drew closer, he saw that the misshapen lumps dangling from the ramparts were actually decomposing bodies: he tore his eyes away before he could recognize any of the corpses.

            “Quite disgusting, isn’t it,” Potter murmured calmly, as they reached the great front doors, which were painted with a horrible red sigil.  The griffin seal over the entrance had been Transfigured into a Dark Mark.  “And you helped bring this about,” Potter added, as the doors opened to more leering Death Eaters.

            “Oh, I wouldn’t blame me if I were you,” Harry said lazily, forcing Potter at wandpoint up the steps and into the entrance hall.  “Perhaps if you’d been a little more _respectful of authority_, you wouldn’t be in this position.”

            Potter turned then, and there was such bitterness in his face that inwardly, Harry recoiled.  But he steeled himself and twisted the knife, as Snape would have done.  “The ultimate punishment is about to be yours,” he said, gesturing with his wand for Potter to keep walking toward the Great Hall.  They crossed another black sigil painted on the floor before the grand staircase.  “Are you sorry for your sins, Potter?”

            “Not nearly as sorry as you’re going to be for yours,” Potter said, gritting his teeth.

            “Well, time will try,” Harry said with a sneer.

            At the door to the Great Hall, Potter turned to him once more, lip curled.  “Are you quite finished?” he said, quietly.

            And Harry was.  “Yes,” he said softly, looking the other man in the eye.  “_Pax vobiscum_.”

            Potter went very white.  He opened his lips, but at that moment the doors to the Great Hall swung open, and a high, cold voice said, “Enter.”

            Harry grasped Potter roughly by the arm and threw him into the room, so that he staggered forward a few steps before regaining his own equilibrium.  But then he walked forward with a carefree stride that left Harry admiring both his nerve and his acting talent.  Harry himself swept forward, his wand held lightly like a conductor’s baton, and followed Snape up the middle of the hall toward the dais, where Voldemort lazed in Dumbledore’s chair, red eyes glinting in triumph.  Overhead, through the bewitched ceiling, the overcast sky swirled green, as if before a terrible storm.

            _I have triumphed over all my enemies.  I have triumphed_….

            He felt the surge of power as he drew closer and Voldemort sought his mind; but Voldemort’s power met no resistance in Harry, for his thoughts were fluid and perfectly passive:  _I have triumphed_….

            “Ah,” Voldemort cried, to Potter.  “Welcome!”

            Potter bowed shortly.  “Afternoon, Tom.  Thought I’d pop round for teatime.  Serving anything good?”

            “How funny you should ask,” Voldemort said.  He snapped his fingers, and two very disheveled figures appeared with a crack, dressed in rags and cringing.  “May I present Hogwarts’s newest house-elves.  I’m sure they would be happy to serve…well, not you, but certainly me.”

            Harry only brushed them with a disdainful glance, but Potter turned his head to look at them for a long moment; and from her cringing position Hermione uttered a soft cry.  “Harry!”

            “What have you done to them?” Potter said quietly.  A faint aura of danger emanated from him that Harry knew was as much Snape’s as his own.

            “Only restored them to their rightful place in the natural order of things,” Voldemort crooned at him; Ron, still bowing, glared malevolently at Voldemort from a very dirty freckled face.  Then, suddenly, he turned the murderous glare on Harry, who ignored it with magisterial effort.

            “Harry,” Hermione managed to squeak out, “it’s a trap!”

            “Of course it’s a trap, you stupid girl,” Harry snarled; Hermione turned to look at him with wide, reproachful eyes.

            “Yeah,” Potter said, “and I came to spring it.”  Quicker than thought, he drew his wand and whipped it mightily at the Death Eaters lounging on the dais all around.  There were a few seconds of pandemonium, and he managed to get quite a high body count before Voldemort rose to his feet in fury.  From behind, Harry cried, “_Expelliarmus!_”; Snape’s wand went flying into the air, and Harry caught it neatly.

            “Did you not think, Severus,” Voldemort said, narrowing his eyes at Harry, “to check him for a spare wand?”

            “It was an oversight, my Lord,” Harry said, with a bow of perfect dignified obsequiousness.  “I assure you I will not make the same mistake twice.”

            “Indeed you will not,” Voldemort said, drawing a visible furious breath and looking round at the inert forms of his followers.  “And since you were so successful as to capture this little thorn in my flesh, you will also be so good as to remove it.  Kill him.”

            Harry snapped his gaze up to Voldemort.  “Me, my Lord?”

            “Did you not hear me, Severus?”

            “But my Lord—the prophecy—”

            Voldemort opened his thin lips, but it was Potter who answered.  “—will be fulfilled.”

            “You hear?” Voldemort sneered.  “Potter’s arrogance is second only to his stupidity.  I, however, am not a fool.  I am sure, Severus, in your resourcefulness and sagacity, you understand that your attempt to kill Potter will tell me exactly what I need to know.  If he can be killed…which I am quite sure he can.  He stinks of mortality.”

            Potter turned to him, with a thin, bitter smile on his lips.  “Go on then, Professor.  Have a go.  You heard your Lord.”

            Harry narrowed his eyes at Snape.  “You bastard,” he hissed.

            “I could have predicted this, you know,” Potter said, smiling even wider.  “The situation’s just chock full of irony, don’t you think?  I seem to recall us being in a similar position before now—when was that?  Oh, yes—when you killed Albus Dumbledore.”  Potter shook his head.  “Oh, how the tables do turn.”

            “No!” Ron said, a great shudder coming over him where he crouched in Harry’s peripheral vision.  But Harry was looking at Snape, like a rabbit mesmerized by a cobra.

            “Dumbledore wasn’t afraid to die,” Potter went on.  “And neither am I.  In fact, I dare say Dumbledore considered it his moment of triumph.”

            “Death is not triumph,” Harry said harshly.

            “Not for you,” Potter said.  “But it is for me.  You kill me, and I will win.  The prophecy will be fulfilled and the Dark Order will be defeated.”

            Voldemort laughed.  “He’s bluffing,” a wounded Death Eater growled from Voldemort’s side.

            “Nope, not bluffing,” Potter said cheerfully.  “You don’t bluff in chess.  Next move, checkmate—for me, that is.”

            “He’s beginning to bore me, Severus,” Voldemort said.

            “Yes, come now, Severus,” Potter said, seriously.  “You mustn’t disappoint your master.  Do it.  You don’t want James and Lily to have died in vain, do you?”

            “You do,” Harry said softly, “have some nerve.”

            And he raised his wand.

 

*

 

_finis_


End file.
